


And After Darkness, Light

by AceQueenKing



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore
Genre: Alternate Universe - Space, Circular Stories, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Plants, Strategy & Tactics, gods playing games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-04
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 22:33:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20104690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceQueenKing/pseuds/AceQueenKing
Summary: Some sort of carnivorous plant gently gnaws at Hecate’s arm. Persephone is having another experimental phase, she sees.





	And After Darkness, Light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ruis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruis/gifts).

Hecate never declared her loyalty to any God or Goddess after the War, the War so long ago and yet still _the War_, still ongoing, even after so many worlds. Cronus fell, but the game remained. That’s the problem with their kind: they’re all either hunters or scavengers, petty immortals caught in endless war games. They build civilizations and harvest them, gathering resources for this round, and the next round, and the round after that. The pattern has been pretty much written at this point. Hecate sees lesser species fall under their thrall, whether the relationship is beneficial or cancerous — it makes no difference, in the end. In time, the resources their age-old game depends upon are exhausted, the technology of their subordinates advanced only so much to allow the celestials among them to hop to the next system, the next resource-rich civilization, the next, the next, the next. They are not benevolent gods, not their kind.

Hecate is no exception, though she is aware enough of her nature that she does try to limit just how much she takes; never a fighter, Hecate, unless it's required. She takes what she needs to live, and nothing more. She helps mortals as much as she can without attracting the attention of those above them, and nothing more. This stance is nothing so righteous as a credo or some kind of vow; the truth is, it has come down to survival. Her strength lies in being unseen. 

Hecate has, as always, carved out her own space. She is not quite loyal to any of the six great players of the game, but there has always been an understanding between her and the faction called _darkness, _called_ Underworld_, no matter who the leader might be in any given moment. She makes herself no threat, and they turn their eyes blind when it comes to her places and spaces there. She is useful; Hades, in particular, knows this, respects it. She has no alliance, but their relationship is symbiotic: she is his algae, he is her fungus. She can go where he cannot, and so she does. She brings him words of things in return for her safekeeping: news, when there is news; descriptions of life in more well-lit places than his coal-dark engines, when he requires purpose or inspiration, each divinely plucked word a balm to his soul; messages to and from his wife, when needed. Hades, living so long in his dark-thrumming engine room, the roar of machines almost enough to drown out the whining of the fossilized dead who float around them, incorporeal pyreflies – those letters from his wife, his sometime lady, are all that leads him to continue playing.

She has never declared an allegiance for him, though he has ceased to act surprised when Hecate shows up upon his metaphorical doorstep each time their great war-ships leave port. This brief season is the only peace they get before the cycle begins again: another world gets chosen, another game gets played. In truth, she has not been on any of the other ships, can only offer recollections of the long-dead world's above they have inhabited between journeys, between stars. Like Persephone, she can't quite ever declare her allegiance to one space, even if, unlike Persephone, she winds up living most of her life in dark holds of the Underworld's ship, _Erebus. _Persephone is unpredictable; She suspects that is why Persephone’s piece was even put on the table in this match. Sometimes Persephone is there with them, sometimes she isn’t; the seasons turn, and the game goes on.

Persephone is a game-player with a sister-strategy to her own in this endless chess match; if Hecate belongs to no house, Persephone belongs to them all. She is the daughter of storms and summertime, a friend and confidant of Nereids and Dryads alike, and mate of the lord of the dead; she is beholden to no one but her own self, but she knows all. Sometimes she plays the games at her husband’s side. Sometimes, when the balance shifts, she plays at her mother’s; once, she played at her father’s, but that is not a strategy she pursues anymore. Hecate doesn’t inquire why she shifts, her allegiances somehow both solid and silky thin; they all have their strategies. Hades plays are always conservative – he invests his ship with a full stealth system, always waiting, for the fight to come to him. When they land, he will strike-attack last, devouring life in one simple, brutal gesture; Hecate's plays are more liberal, wheeling and dealing favors as easily as she mixes incantations. Persephone is a pure maverick, a daring player who shucks the rules with high-stakes claims. She holds everyone’s attention, just based on what card she chooses to play any given round.

She wonders what part she is playing in the old games now. Hecate’s black boots crunch on summer leaves of the ship’s arboretum – falling now in the stimulated winter-light, not long before the missus is back with her mother now. What their relationship to one another is, Hecate can never quite say – she gives them as big a berth as they give to her – but whatever it is, it’s changing. Hecate, so able to sense the razor-thin edge between seasons of the game, smells it. Not that her inferences are needed; the bag she has in her hands is proof enough of that.

“Bring this to my wife,” Hades had thundered, as he always did; she supposes he has no choice but to speak loud to speak over the thrum of his mighty engines, the finest in the fleet but requiring constant – constant – manual control, and only the dead and their leader see well enough through the hazy darkness. That in and of itself an interesting adaptation; electrical grids could power stealth or lighting, and Hades has chosen to do without the later to remain safer in the former; this is the best part of the game, the unique strategies one ferments over millennia. Hekate likes to keep careful watch over the traits adopted and left behind. Hades put a small drawstring bag in her hand that she now holds, and it feels like it weighs nothing at all and it feels like it holds the world. She is curious, but she doesn’t dare too to spoil the present by opening it.

Presents are always best like this, unlimited potential in a slim package. He’s paid her the usual fare for her patronage – not that he couldn’t walk upstairs himself and present this to her, but Hecate supposes that after so many cycles Hades himself doesn’t rightly know what happens when he steps away from those controls too long – would the ship continue to fly? Stop? De-cloak? Devour itself like a black hole? She does not rightly know. She suspects neither does he. Oh well. Best not to pry. Hades is dogmatic in all the worst ways. At times she sees Persephone sneak down to his engine room; she supposes that is enough. 

She pauses as she goes through the arboretum; watching the light glitter through the dense canopy of vegetation Persephone has produced for them. She always makes a bit extra, something to keep her and Hades and the multitudinous, countless dead (who, somehow, still _hunger_) alive when she is gone. Hades never bothered to invest in anything beyond an automated hydroponic system that grinds up a nutritious ambrosial paste that tastes, entirely, of dirt.

Hecate’s happier this cycle has Persephone around; the plants she grows are truly a marvel, even if the simulated sunshine itches a bit. Hecate nips a handful of the last of this trips cherries from a tree, knowing the woman won’t mind much so long as she doesn't litter the dirt-floor with the seeds. Persephone’s arbor reminds her of the best times in the games, when it is, truly, anyone’s gamble. She loves the wild spaces that reign in this great unknown period; they are all too quickly reigned in favor of agriculture and city-scapes. She comes upon the great doors to the laboratory without even quite realizing where she is; as always, Hecate slips through the ethereal doorway, not stumbling through habit over her friend’s multitude of buckets and hoses, vines and thorns. She blinks into bright (over bright) sunlight as she steps into a laboratory, grown thick with vines and flowers. Hades’ automatic hydroponic system lies naked and disrepair in the corner; as always, it has gone to rust in his wife's presence. She has no use for it.

Some sort of carnivorous plant gently gnaws at Hecate’s arm. Persephone is having another experimental phase, she sees. Hecate isn’t surprised; experimentation is what Persephone loves most and though Hades is conservative with his engine, he lets her do whatever she pleases on these upper decks. Including carnivorous plants, it seems; it continues to gum, oozing a sweet-smelling substance on her arm. After she makes sure Persephone isn’t looking, Hecate wordlessly nudges it aside; she knows the botanist-cum-flower maiden is protective of her plants.

She holds out the bag, feels it echo with void-song and metal-grinding; beautiful, and hideous, all the same, no need to explain the origins but she does anyway. “From the downstairs,” she says; there is no need to play coy but centuries of doing such as a habit are too ingrained not to.

Persephone startles, shivering as she touches the bite of her husband's aura. One of the carnivorous nasties bites at her hair and she waves it away with a mother’s affectionate irritation. “Stop, Medea,” she mutters; Hecate wonders if she just likes the name, or if there’s some greater meaning behind it.

“He is lonely down there, I think,” Persephone says, a quirk of her lips giving away her pleasure at still being desired. She hesitates a moment before taking the bag, examining all the plants in front of her. “How are you, Hecate?” 

“Itchy and a bit over-warm after walking through your forest out there, I must say.” She wrinkles her nose and wishes, not for the first time, that Persephone grew the better tasting stuff in more shaded spaces. She can’t blame her – it isn’t like the woman has a lot of sunlight to work with when she’s in this old rig – but it is tiresome. After centuries of being underground in various underworlds, Hecate is more used to the dark. 

Persephone rolls her eyes. “You should get out more. Visit mother’s ship with me, next time. Every room is a banquet full of exciting new foods and medicines. Think what she'll grow when we land!”

She gently opens the bag, peers inside; a secret smile lights up her face. “Ah, he remembered.” What he remembered, and whether it is important, she does not say.

“I prefer the world’s, and the ships, that exist in the in-between.” Hecate sucks in a smirk; there is pleasure in that, in eliding the spaces between light and darkness, that she suspects her friend knows, even if she doesn’t say. “Besides, who will water the plant, if not me? Your husband is so forgetful of anything but his engine.”

“True enough,” she snorts. She holds out a type of what Hecate _thinks_ is a carrot, though this one, with a thin and ready network of fibrous arms, looks not entirely like any type of carrot she has ever seen, even if it is orange. “I’ve been doing some work,” she chirrups, smiles over Hecate’s friendly eye-roll; like her husband, she is always working. There are reasons these two always survive so late in any given games.

“It looks frightening, but it tastes – “ she grins. “Do try.”

Hecate knows enough of Persephone to know the woman wouldn’t intentionally poison her, and she hesitantly snaps off a bit. She doesn’t bother to carefully examine it before she pops it into her mouth. If _Persephone_ thinks a plant looks bad, it probably looks like a real horror show to Hekate. She chews carefully – it tastes like carrots, but also a bit of almonds, and the slightest hint of honey-apple sweetness to it. It is not an expected combination of flavors, but it is not bad. Like the perfect bite of summer and autumn mixed together; the crispness of a late summer apple in the carrot’s snap, the bittersweetness of winter in the almonds, a hint of the eternal winter that lies beyond the veil. She nibbles thoughtfully, watching Persephone pull out Hades’ gift – some sort of dark, void-esque soot. She cups a bit in her palm and feeds it to Medea, and then reaches out, feeding it to three other nuzzle-biters in the same vicinity: Orpheus, Aeneas, and Psyche nibble at the soot as well, each hungrily pawing her hand as she shakes more out of it.

“It’s good,” she admits.

“Told you,” Persephone crows, looking for all the world like a proud mother. “I’m making extra, we’ll dehydro’em for the next round.” A good indication she’ll be going back to her mother’s ship next go, then, if she’s talking preservatives; shame.

Hecate doesn’t announce that Persephone has all but telegraphed her intentions; she might not play to win but even Hecate has a vested interest in not showing weaknesses in other’s games. “You’ll take care of yourself, won’t you?” Persephone asks, her voice a bit sad. More than telegraphed now but they do not comment on it, either of them. “The leaves are falling now. Seasons are changing, and the game will begin again soon. We must be close to landfall.” 

“I will,” she promises; she squeezes her friend’s hand. “Him, too. Don’t worry. You both owe me, though.”

“I’ll leave you some good food for him, he’ll come out for apple-and-raisin cake no matter how much he grumbles about the ship falling into disarray,” Persephone says, smiling. “You, however – you should come with me.”

“Must I?” She nibbles a bit more at the strange carrot-matrix; Persephone is measuring something in the plants she’s fed the mixture to, measuring them with some sort of device Hecate isn’t even close to identifying.

“You’re not playing to win; you can go from camp to camp. Free as a honeybee, you and me.” Persephone scuttles her fingers deep in the dirt of a cup and a plant shrivels; she sticks the same fingers into one of the plants she’s fed the void to, and it grows, slowly. “Don’t you want to see more than this one black ship between games? I don’t think I’ve ever seen you anywhere else.”

“I’m not a fan of being seen,” Hecate points out; she has always looked to find the path between point A and point B that stays in the shadows as much as possible. “Being seen means someone is seeing you.”

“I know, but it’s not – all bad. To be noticed. I wouldn’t be here if I weren’t noticed, once.” She flicks her fingers, pointing to the ground below. Hecate nods; they are both so old, their stories can be elucidated to brief references. Their kind does not forget, which is what makes their petty wars so tragic. They have always seen how it ends. And yet, rather than learning, than attempting to cross the divide, they always elect to begin to play the game again.

“He’ll be sad you’re not here,” Hecate says, pivoting topics to something safer; she may not be entirely of the underworld but being out of the shadowy realm is terrifying and uncomfortable in ways that feel primordial in Hecate’s skin. She tries to imagine seeing Persephone in the full, natural sunlight Persephone claims her mother’s entire ship is bedecked in; solar sails spread wide and light filtering out any shadows. She thinks she would look upon the woman and feel that she was burning. “Someone should stick around. Lest he decides not to play the game.” He’s always been the player most likely to quit this fantastical game of chess that spans centuries and eons and a thousand, no, a hundred thousand cultures; the dead, after all, rarely intervene in the matters of the living.

“It's really not necessary. He’s patient. His turn will come again. And I am leaving him a gift.” She pauses, presses her hand to the plant to her right – Medea, evidently, judging by her nametag. Hecate smiles at the thought; she’s grown a few plants in her own many lifetimes but never was she quite as whimsical as Persephone. Her friend smiles, the smile wide and a bit sinister in this low light.”And one for you, as well, since you choose not to follow me this turn.”

“I’ll wait for you to come back,” Hecate says, flipping her hair over her shoulders; she doesn’t like the look of Medea, who seems to want to munch upon her hair. “You know I always do. I’ll water the plants, of course,” she says, though she’s never been able to keep them alive; without Persephone, they all die in the quiet dark. Hecate, so good at seeing what’s between spaces, isn’t talented at seeing needs and wants in creatures that cannot talk back. 

Persephone, who doesn’t belong anywhere more than she does, smiles. “I know.” She gives her a hug, feather-light but comforting, and smiles. “Would you like to see what I’m leaving you two, then?”

“Sure,” Hecate says; Persephone takes three steps back, her hand raised over the light switch in the ship’s room. “Show it to me.”

Persephone flips the lights. Hecate sucks in a tight breath – not because the room is dark – it’s always dark – but because it is _not._

The whirling carnivorous plants in front of her glow with what looks like pyrelight, soul-light; she thinks of the chips of black dirt Persephone was feeding the plants and understands the magic behind it instantly, she who has always seen the unseen: souls. The plants have been ensouled.

And that soul-light is _shining_.

“Bioluminescent,” Persephone clucks. “Bred to live in the dark. They eat pyreflies and foglight, since we have those in abundance – what do you think?”

The glow they emit is faint but it is stunning; helpful to see, but without the itchy skin-feel of sunlight.

“It’s a torch,” Hecate breathes. “Won’t this unbalance the game? Give the Underworld too much in its favor?”

“I don’t think so,” Persephone smirks. “He waits so long to make a move, no one will notice anyway.”

As if in response, the ship lurches; they’ve found a destination world, and Hecate’s heart sinks. Soon, her friend will be gone, and the game will begin again, and burrowing out a whole new underworld sounds so tiresome after several hundreds of thousands of lifetimes of doing so. “You’ll be going soon, I expect,” Hecate says.

Persephone doesn’t speak at first, responds by picking up two of her carnivorous beasties, tossing both into Hecate’s hands. Medea and Orpheus, looks like; Medea bites at her wrist with nubby glee and Hecate curls her lip, trying not to whack the plant in annoyance. The names feel like they will be important, even if she isn't sure why yet. 

“Keep them lit.” Persephone squeezes her hands and her skin is warm; Hecate frowns. She hasn’t turned the lights back on but Persephone is bright, bright, bright – and then she sees an alarm for a distinctive ship passing overhead and she realizes as soon as she sees the solar sail what is happening.

The woman is getting teleported by her mother; she is going to her mother ship.

“Until next time,” Hecate says; Persephone mouths words, words that might be _tell him_ or _see you_ or perhaps, simply _play well_. Then she gone, the light pulling her to the world beyond.

Hecate sighs, begins the long tromp back down to the engine room, with her newfound bounty in her hands. The game has begun again; the ship dips down as Hades finds a new underworld, sending the bow of their ship deep down into a hole whose aftershocks will be, among other things, the devastation of life that will one day puzzle the higher-but-still-lesser beings that will one day inherit this world.

She checks the navigation as she stands in the quiet arboretum, the tree’s leaves all standing around her; the third planet from this sun, rocky crust, one satellite. Seems as good as any other. She wonders how Hades will take these strange new plants; if after so many years of darkness, if seeing these torch-lights will burn his corneas. She hopes not. She likes them, for all that their biting is annoying. It's something new, in an old game, and that's enough for now. She strokes the softly glowing plants, her torches burning bright, and waits for their craft to come to rest, and for the game to begin again.

And for her friend to come back to a land that neither of them can quite admit is home.


End file.
